Archive for the ‘Santorum’ Category

I’m following the comments on the conservative blogs and social media since the Republican National Convention, and I see two, diverging threads of interest.

One is cautiously optimistic that Romney WILL actually be better for the future of the USA than four more years of Obamanation.

The other sees no differences between them, and sees the choice as binary — either Obama OR Romney — is a false choice. Somehow, they believe, voting for a third-party candidate, or sitting out the presidential race, or even sitting out the whole election, is the only honorable and/or Godly choice. Romney is simply too flawed to be worthy of their votes.

I can identify strongly with portions of both threads, but the appeal of the sitting-it-out option for me is purely emotional, and I’m over it. I was angry about the selection process that gave us Romney, but hardly surprised. The same backstage manipulators that gave us McCain were responsible for giving us Romney, and I’m angry about that, too.

Anger, however, is a dangerous motivation for any decision, but especially for deciding how, or whether, to vote, and especially dangerous this time around.

Alan Keyes, whom I admire and respect, seems firmly convinced that Romney is evil, and only trivially different from Obama. He thinks voting for Romney “just” to keep Obama from a second term is tantamount to selling his soul. Others, friends whose opinions I take seriously, believe that, as well, to one degree or another.

A subset of the above group think Romney is just this election’s John McCain, but I think John McCain was not only a RINO, but an abysmal candidate for President. He may have been able to convince enough Arizonans over the last hundred years to keep him in the Senate, but he was either utterly inept at running for the presidency, or actively defeating himself at every turn, because he couldn’t have done a worse job of running for president if he really didn’t want to be president.

Either way, Romney is far better as a candidate. At least that is my current assessment, based on his acceptance speech at the RNC and his actions in the first day after that.

Having vacillated in 2008 between Joseph Farah’s “None of the Above” position, and writing in Alan Keyes because I could not bring myself to vote for McCain, and because there was no way in Hell I was going to vote for Obama, I finally settled on writing-in Keyes. I don’t regret that vote, because McCain was, and is, as sleazy and success-driven a politician as Obama, but with more history to prove it.

Contrary to what some of my Republican friends say, I have no faith that McCain would have been a better president that Obama has been. Where Obama is ideologically driven to do whatever is worst for America, I believe John McCain would have done whatever his sycophants and manipulators could persuade him to do, and he was as much a chump for the global warming scams and other liberal pretexts for grabbing power, and for establishment Republican “inclusiveness” and “compassionate conservatism” scams as any RINO, and as most out-front Liberals.

While his motivations might have been portrayed as noble, his results would have differed only in degree from those of Obama. If McCain could rationalize any decision with his imaginary legacy, or his chances at re-election, or that coveted chairman-emeritus spot on some tax-money-laundering “non-profit” foundation, he would have done so, and the Constitution, “quote-Conservatives-unquote,” and his country could be damned.

Ron Paul is running, as always. But it doesn’t matter, because he is a reptile with not more than one view or belief in a hundred in common with me, so he might as well not be running. Ron Paul zealots did their best to steal the nomination, and failed spectacularly. It was a pratfall-on-a-banana-peel, slapstick failure – one that would embarrass into silence and self-imposed obscurity anyone capable of embarrassment.

I now know what another four years of Obama would bring, and I see voting for him, not voting, or voting for a write-in or third-party candidate as an absolute betrayal of my country.

With the huge effort at vote fraud Obama and his troops will undertake, and have already undertaken, including registering illegal aliens, registering dead and non-existent voters, busing union stooges from one polling place to another to vote multiple times, forging and mass-producing fraudulent absentee and early ballots, the living, legitimate voters may be outnumbered. (That isn’t hyperbole. In more than one precinct in 2008, actual votes cast outnumbered registered voters significantly. Vote fraud is a Democrat industry. Fraudulent votes are the one commodity they produce on a regular basis.)

I will be casting my one, legal vote for Romney.

Arithmetic is relentlessly non-ideological, and absolutely dispassionate. My one, legal vote for Romney will require two votes for Obama from the dead, and/or cartoon characters, and/or union thugs, and/or incarcerated felons, and/or illegal aliens, to put him back in the lead.

One vote is all I have, and I’ll be damned (with apologies to my friends who think I will be jeopardizing my soul) if I’ll give Obama even the slightest advantage by wasting it.

Small but mighty -- tugboats maneuver the carrier USS John F. Kennedy into its mooring place. (Wikipedia)

Patient and constant pressure – that’s how little tugboats move big ships where they are supposed to go. That is what conservatives will have to do with the new (God willing!) president.

This is directed at you Republicans who say you will stand behind your non-Romney candidate for the nomination, no matter what, all the way to Election Day.

I feel your pain. I wrote in Alan Keyes in the general election in 2008, and have discussed extensively why I did that. Hand-picked loser John McCain was just too repugnant a weasel to vote for. I still believe the GOP establishment picked him as the best candidate to hand the election to Barack Obama. Why? Because losing was less scary for them than winning and having to admit to the unpleasant state in which George II left us, and then (shudder) deal with it.

The flaw in my analysis of that election was that I swallowed the popular assumption that electing the “right” president would reverse the century of Progressive erosion that has nearly washed away our fundamental freedoms.

That erosion paved the way for Trojan Horse Marxist Barack Obama, the single most destructive president in history, who then did more damage to our Constitutional Republic than any president since Wilson, and is on a trajectory to become a virtual – or actual – dictator in a second term.

With A Democrat majority in the House and Senate until the Great Rebound of 2010, Obama rammed through legislation, and appointed “Czars” that threaten to turn the Constitution into a meaningless rag. Obamacare, with its thousands of pages of abuses and illegalities; “recess appointments” without recesses; Supreme Court nominees without any qualifications other than allegiance to his socialist world view; “Fast and Furious,” and other, grotesque miscarriages of justice by his sock-puppet Attorney General, apologies to despots not entitled to apologies… the list is long.

If he gets a second term, Obama and his crew of leftist hacks and clowns will accomplish their mission, turning the best country in the history of the world into a third-rate banana republic, without the capacity to grow a single banana.

After the airway, breathing and circulation are restored, there will still be not just years, but decades of work to do, rooting out the regulators and executive branch hacks and parasites who have embedded themselves in the bloated bulk of our federal government, feeding on their host while contributing, each of them, to its destruction.

That is why I will vote for the Republican nominee in November, no matter who he (OR SHE!) is.

Our new (God willing!) president, prodded by the conservative tugboats in Congress and the tens of millions of Tea Party conservatives and Constitutionalists in the electorate, will have to apply patient and constant pressure to the right, forcing the government back into the role prescribed for it in our founding documents.

No single man or woman, no single president, can reverse the century of socialization advanced by Democrats and Liberal Republicans.

The angry and awakened conservative electorate simply cannot go back to sleep — even if the Republicans win big in November.

We have to take some of the time that we used to use to work, play and take care of our families, and put it into relentless, constant pressure on all three branches of government to get out of our faces, out of our pockets, out of our families, out of our businesses, and back into the constraints of the Constitution.

We can force a Republican Senate to approve competent and ethical appointments to cabinet departments and to the federal courts, and to soundly reject stupid, negligent or simply corrupt nominees, regardless of presidential or GOP hack pressure.

We can steer a Republican House to reject any act that doesn’t contract our debt, and to defund agencies that don’t have any Constitutional basis for their existence, while we wait for a chastened executive branch to abolish those agencies and departments. We can also compel our Representatives to initiate impeachment of unfit judges, and build fires under cabinet officials who have lost sight of their Constitutional limitations and responsibilities.

We can’t do any of the above without research, emails, calls, visits, campaign contributions and constant vigilance applied by millions of diligent, persistent voters.

We can push a rudderless America away from the emotional appeals of the progressives and liberal lobbies, and back toward

Like tugs moving a giant ship, or like a Cumberland River towboat pushing thousands of tons of gravel or grain downriver, we can steer the Republican “leadership” in the right direction – or replace them in the next elections.

Barge tug pushes thousands of tons of cargo on the Cumberland River near Ashland City, TN (Photo by the author)

The cement is still wet enough to scratch my initials in, but it’s curing around my vote for Newt, March 6th.

Best Candidate:

We need a thick-skinned, sharp-toothed junkyard dog to beat the Obama/Media-Pimp/Soros/KGB/Muslim-Brotherhood complex.

Romney is such a gone-over marketing package that I see him as more package than product. Yes, he seems conservative on some issues — maybe even most — but he is SO polished and marketing-driven that I don’t think he will have a hard enough edge in debates with Obama and surrogates, and in ambush interviews with the Obamedia to keep conservatives interested and motivated, and to make a bold contrast between himself and Obama.

Santorum is a little too Mister Rogers for me, and, like Romney, he doesn’t appear to be capable of confronting Obama aggressively, and establishing the stark contrast that will make softer 2008 Obama voters think, “I voted for ‘change,’ not for ‘destruction’, and not for turning this country into a phony-baloney, socialist utopia. And that doesn’t make me a racist, it makes me willing to admit a mistake, and CORRECT IT.”

There is too a strong vein of McCain-style, smiley-face milquetoast in him, and it can come out at the worst possible moment (think Arlen Specter), letting ObamaCo make him look flatter than stale beer.

Ron Paul may be capable of the junkyard dog thing, but how can anyone be comfortable with the appallingly-large component of wackoid, hate-spewing, racist loons who are stuck to him? Most of them have more in common with Louis Farrakhan than with me.

He can’t win the election, because his foaming-at-the-mouth acolytes will alienate everyone but themselves from him, and then they will turn on each other, leaving a battered few to show up at the polls… probably on Wednesday, after they run out of pot.

If a man is known by the company he keeps, Paul is a guy who is comfortable with a live grenade rolling around in the back of his pickup truck — probably Obama’s dream opponent.

Gingrich has shown repeatedly, in the 327 Republican debates, and in multiple ambush “interviews” that he can stand up under tremendous pressure and articulate conservative principles both rationally and persuasively, even in the face of the most intense, lying, hate-filed attacks Obama and his jackals can muster. He can punch, but most importantly, he can counter-punch, hard — and that is critical.

Newt’s so-called “baggage” is all out there, and none of it matters up against the Obama baggage (make that a Chinese mega-freighter full of shipping containers dripping toxic waste) already in the public record, AND the many, as-yet-undisclosed skeletons in Obama’s closet, many of which will spill out by Fall, despite the Obamedia’s best efforts. If Newt’s campaign goes after Obama as it should and could, the baggage will all belong to Barack.

Best President:

None of the Final Four will make an ideal, constitutionally-sound president. If that’s what you’re looking for, forget it. Now, back to reality:

Santorum and Romney are in a mushy tie, as far as being trustworthy in the Big Chair. Either of them seems capable of being persuaded to do outrageous things in “the best interest of the majority (read, “Romneycare”, and “Arlen Specter”, as above), or in some Marxist-theology-tainted religious appeal, even if those things are explicitly unconstitutional and wrong — as long as they have the right emotional hooks.

Ron Paul is a non-starter. What does his acceptance of the support of his bizarre fan base say about Paul’s judgment? Nothing that makes me want him in the White House.

Add to that, he is clearly, fatally, 180-degrees wrongabout Israel and foreign policy, and the threat of Islam. That he sticks with those insane, immoral positions is all the evidence I need that he has a deep character flaw, defective judgment, and/or a tenuous grip on reality.

Okay, Least-Bad President:

Any of them would require a continuous prod with a flaming, sharp stick, to move them toward constitutional government and away from New Deal tyranny. I feel about 1.5% better turning my back on Newt for as long as two minutes at a time. Mitt and Rick, not for a second. Either of them could be swayed by a good sales pitch, even if intrinsically wrong, if the emotional appeal were strong enough. Paul? I shudder to think of him loose in the Commander-in-Chief’s chair, spinning and squealing, without adult supervision.

My instinct is that Newt has a hard enough core to send any pack of lobbyist jackals dressed as a sales team packing, and feeling as if they had just had their bark peeled. I can’t say that about any of the others.